Anonymity and the internet have become one in the same on a vast majority of the websites. This break from reality can even become the core component of a virtual world like the World of Warcraft. Last week we've delved into the basic concept of anonymity. This week we shall discuss what happens when the break from reality is threatened and how those anonymous individuals will share their lines of thought on the issue.
In July of 2010 Blizzard games, the company responsible for the massively popular Warcraft and Starcraft franchises decided to unveil it's Real Id system where gamers who wished to continue playing these games must register their legal name with Blizzard, only then would they have access to the game forums. A representative from Blizzard commented the following,
“Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven't been connected before.”
While several media outlets simply viewed this change as a way for Blizzard to make its forums more pleasant and a way to drive the trolls away, gamers were not so unanimous on the decision. In fact, the fourm post discussing this topic was so hot (it received well over two thousand responses in a single week) that Blizzard was truly out numbered when the majority of players made comments about how this sort of change would ruin their hobby and take away “the most important part of the game.”
A writer for the Washington Post disuses how Blizzard philosophical mistake here is that anonymity isn't necessarily the issue. The issue is unaccountability. As Plato has discussed, anonymity brings unaccountability where even a moral individual becomes immoral due to the lack of consequence. This brings us to an ethical question regarding anonymity. How far does the right to be anonymous go, if there is a right at all and how does it interact with the ethical concept of an individual being held accountable for their actions. In past centuries anonymity and unaccountability were one in the same, but with the advent of technology IP addresses and computer virus's can remove that anonymity and make an individuals identity known, thus making them accountable.
Briefly, back to the World of Warcraft, Blizzard's CEO the very next posted on the forums that,
"As a result of those discussions, we've decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums."
Through this example we see that while technology does not cause the philosophical problems, it does change their nature and practice in a basic practical fashion. Perhaps truly to make judgment on the line of where anonymity end and accountability to begins we must examine several legal cases in the following weeks to see what the courts have decided on the issue. However, before we discover anonymity in practice, we must delve deeper into the effects anonymity has on the human conditions and the reasons for the deep desire of unaccountability. As a social experiment for the next week, it may be interesting to seal ever blog post written with your legal name, just to see how it effects what you're posting on the web, just something to consider.
Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/opinion/30zhuo.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15257832
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.3.ii.html
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2010/07/world_of_warcraft_real_names.html
http://blog.iternalnetworks.com/2011/anonymity-on-the-internet/
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